The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Master's Projects and Capstones Theses, Dissertations, Capstones and Projects Spring 5-18-2017 Creating a Curriculum for Preschool Educators in Asia: How to Teach Kindergarteners Speaking and Listening Skills in English through Games YUE KUANG University of San Francisco, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.usfca.edu/capstone Part of the Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons, Early Childhood Education Commons, and the International and Comparative Education Commons Recommended Citation KUANG, YUE, "Creating a Curriculum for Preschool Educators in Asia: How to Teach Kindergarteners Speaking and Listening Skills in English through Games" (2017). Master's Projects and Capstones. 494. https://repository.usfca.edu/capstone/494 This Project/Capstone is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, Capstones and Projects at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Projects and Capstones by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. University of San Francisco Creating a Curriculum for Preschool Educators in Asia: How to Teach Kindergarteners Speaking and Listening Skills in English through Games A Field Project Proposal Presented to The Faculty of the School of Education International and Multicultural Education Department In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Second Language By Yue Kuang May 2017 Creating a Curriculum for Preschool Educators in Asia: How to Teach Kindergarteners Speaking and Listening Skills in English through Games In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree MASTER OF ARTS in TEACHING ENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE by Yue Kuang May 2017 UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO Under the guidance and approval of the committee, and approval by all the members, this field project has been accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree. Approved: Luz García May 4, 2017 ___________________ ______________________ Instructor/Chairperson Date ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... iv Abstract ...............................................................................................................................v Chapter I – Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Statement of the Problem ........................................................................................ 1 Purpose of the Project ............................................................................................. 3 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................... 5 Significance of the Project ...................................................................................... 5 Chapter II – Review of the Literature ............................................................................... 7 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 7 Early Childhood Education ................................................................................... 7 Why Second Language Acquisition (SLA) for Young Children is Important ..... 13 How Games Help Children to Learn .................................................................... 14 Summary ............................................................................................................... 16 Chapter III – The Project and Its Development ................................................................ 18 Brief Description of the Project ............................................................................ 18 Development of the Project .................................................................................. 18 The Project ............................................................................................................ 20 Chapter IV – Conclusions and Recommendations ........................................................... 21 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 21 Recommendations ................................................................................................. 21 References ......................................................................................................................... 23 Appendix ........................................................................................................................... 25 iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to give my special thanks to my professor and instructor Dr. Luz. She supervised the whole process of my project and she offered a lot of inspiring suggestions, guidance, and a great deal of encouragement to me. She led me through the confusion of subject selection, theme development, and also project construction. Dr. Luz addressed my questions with great patience and her advice greatly benefited my field project. Second, I would like to thank my friend, Dream Wei, who also gave me lots of assistance during my writing. Because she has a natural willingness to help friends and she has strong writing skills, she offered me a lot of encouragement and support during my writing. Third, I would like to thank my classmate, Sarah Parsons, who shared several relevant materials which was really helpful to my writing. Last, I wish to give my sincere thanks to all my family members, teachers, classmates and friends who helped me during the two years of my graduate studies. Thanks to them from the bottom of my heart. iv ABSTRACT There is a rapid development of science and technology, and international information exchanges have become increasingly frequent as well in 21st century. English learning is becoming a requirement of career success, especially in Asia (Graddol, 2006). So people are beginning to pay more attention to English education, especially early childhood English education. However, most Asian kindergarten teachers prefer to pay more attention to teaching English reading and writing skills, while ignoring the teaching and practices of English listening and speaking (Wang, 2016). Most 3-6 age children do not have the attention span of adults (Garba, Yusuf, & Busthami, 2015), and more importantly the quality of early childhood English education in Asia is not guaranteed, yet it needs to be. So the main purpose of this project is creating a curriculum for early English educators in Asian countries to teach children (3-6 years old) fundamental English speaking and listening skills by using games as teaching methods. Total Physical Response (TPR) and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) are used as the theoretical frameworks for this project. Key words: English education, early childhood education, Asia, TPR, CLT v 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Statement of the Problem In the 21st century, there is a rapid development of science and technology, and international information exchanges have become increasingly frequent as well. People are aware of the importance of cooperation, but at the same time, the competition among countries to attract top talent is increasingly fierce (Jacobson, 2016). Under these circumstances, English has been called “a basic skill” for the purpose of career success in the 21st century, so learning English as a second language plays an important role in Asia (Graddol, 2006). Asia is the largest continent on earth, but the development of its economy is slower than Europe’s while its independence was earlier than Africa’s; as a result, Asians pay more attention to traditional education about local culture and patriotism (Souto- Manning & Vasquez, 2011). However, because of the different status of different countries, early childhood education （ECE） in Asian countries shows their differences: India's investment in ECE is far less than their investment in national defense, while the government of North Korea believes that they should make as much investment in ECE as their national defense. Comparatively speaking, East Asian countries pay more attention to ECE in foreign language learning: Japanese children should learn English or Finnish besides their native language. South Korean children need to learn English or Chinese besides Korean (Lim, 2016). And Chinese children are widely required to learn English (Souto-Manning & Vasquez, 2011). Among all age periods, 3-6 years old is the key period for young children to learn English. Children who are in this age period have the advantages of strong imitation, great understanding, good memory, and rich energy (Nikolov, 2009). Because of this, early 2 childhood English education has gotten more and more attention from people (Nikolov, 2009). There are always some Standard English textbooks used in schools, and most children can receive primary and simple reading and writing skills through these textbooks in class. In recent years, many Asian countries also have begun to pay more and more attention to early childhood English education (Ping, 2015). There are increasing numbers of English preschools which have been built and